Pxtl

Pxtl , 8 hours ago to Technology in Samsung is sunsetting Tizen and fully ending support for the smartwatch OS

They're great hardware but the software is bad.

Pxtl , 10 hours ago to Technology in Samsung is sunsetting Tizen and fully ending support for the smartwatch OS

WearOS, at least the Samsung variant of it, is goddamned awful. It seems to want to be a full standalone device when I want it to just be an extension of my phone, and it's an extension of my phone when I want it to stand alone. Worst of both worlds.

I miss my Pebble. Week-long battery, truly always-on-screen, and knew what it was trying to be (just show me notifications)

Pxtl , 10 hours ago to Technology in In case you missed it: Bank info-stealing malware found in 90+ Android apps with 5.5M installs

That's not what I mean. I'm not thinking about Play Store security, but Android OS security. Like, your app physically has to ask for permission (or even require the user manually change settings) to do most unsafe things.

Pxtl , 13 hours ago to Technology in In case you missed it: Bank info-stealing malware found in 90+ Android apps with 5.5M installs

As somebody who occasionally had to develop for android: the churn of improvements to app security was a huge pita. And as a user I know many of the abandoned apps that I liked that lost compatibility was for that reason.

So the fact that in spite of this pain, Android security still allows apps to do horrible crap like that is infuriating.

Pxtl , 18 days ago to Technology in Opinion | Will A.I. Ever Live Up to Its Hype?

I mean yeah. I'm not disagreeing with any of that (except the fact that AI caused it - search engines got destroyed by SEO before AI textgen started crapflooding).

But it is what it is. The SEO spammers won. They defeated Google and Microsoft and DDG's respective search algorithms. Traditional search got killed. The internet got worse instead of better.

In light of this miserable new reality, AI-based content synthesizers (particularly ones that can coherently point to the references for their synthesis) are the current solution to SEO spam. Maybe this is another temporary plateau that the SEO spammers will murder. And yes, it's tragic that this energy-pig of AI is the best solution to something that used to be doable with a simple trie.

But still: there is a real problem today for which an AI-based tech provides the current best solution. In this one specific case, the AI lives up to the hype. It swallows the hellscape of noise of the internet and gives you the signal.

Pxtl , 18 days ago to Technology in Opinion | Will A.I. Ever Live Up to Its Hype?

Bing Chat provides its sources.

Pxtl , 18 days ago to Technology in Opinion | Will A.I. Ever Live Up to Its Hype?

Absolutely.

Bing Chat Assistant is better than Google, Bing search, or DDG today. If I search for "how do I do X in software Y" on a normal search, I get zillions of dead-link-filled MS pages, some interesting tangentially-related stackoverflow posts, and a bunch of old blogspam.

If I ask the robot, I often get "no, there's no supported way to do that officially" which is the clear clean answer I can't find elsewhere. Or sometimes it misunderstands the question and gives me a tangentially-related result, which is bad but is the same thing I get from Google via StackOverflow, except Bing is much more responsive to me saying "no, I didn't mean that way, I meant this" in which case I often get either the right answer or the "no" answer, which is still good and accurate! The problem is as you iterate, the conversation accumulates cruft and becomes more erratic and hallucinatory.

But right now, with the level of SEO that has ruined all major search engines (ironically partially caused by AI), Bing Chat is the best search on the market now imho. <homer>The cause of and solution to all of life's problems </homer>

So yeah, in terms of "things where AI has lived up to its potential"? It is winning the search war today. Everything else is something on the horizon in various distances (art, music, text generation, true general AI) but better search for information is here right now.

Pxtl , 27 days ago to Technology in The Verge shows how Google search is useless

Except there isn't much of a Google stealing their thunder. Bing isn't better. DDG isn't better.

Pxtl , 1 month ago to Technology in DMCA Notice Targeting ‘Bypass Paywalls Clean’ Isn’t The Thing to Get Angry About

I have a simple opinion on paywall bypassers:

If it's possible to bypass the paywall, that means there's already a class of unauthenticated clients you're allowing to see it. I have no interest in complying with whatever infrastructure you use to implement this discrimination.

Implementing a true hard paywall is trivial software. The only reason bypassing is possible is because they're trying to have their cake and eat it too by allowing (eg) search engines to see it unauthenticated.

Pxtl , 2 months ago to Comic Strips in XXX

You know those "X is now older than Y was when X came out"?

Like, in this case: "Pearl Jam Ten is now older than The White Album was when Pearl Jam Ten came out"

That happened in 2014.

Pxtl , 3 months ago to Technology in No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on

Yeah, this. For people with short commutes and in the market for a compact I strongly recommend the Prius Prime. Having a vehicle that can get to work and back without using gas at all, but also can go on long road trips without range anxiety? Perfect. And as an entry-level into the plug-in world, it's nice that I can charge it on regular 110 instead of having to think about an upgrade to an oven-port.

Pxtl , 3 months ago to Technology in This tiny, tamper-proof ID tag can authenticate almost anything

Oh, physical tag. I thought this was going to be about cryptographic data signing.

Pxtl , 3 months ago to Technology in Google Pulls the Plug: The End of Third-Party Cookies and What it Means | TWiT.TV

The secret trick here: nobody will make a new username and password - nor should they. They'll only log in if they have a convenient login with Google/FB/MS button. Which gives Google premium position in tracking.

Pxtl , 3 months ago to Technology in Microsoft revives aggressive Windows 11 upgrade campaign with intrusive popups for Windows 10 users

Give me back my vertical side-docked taskbar or STFU.

No, I don't want to deal with Explorer Patcher.

Pxtl , 3 months ago to Technology in Microsoft revives aggressive Windows 11 upgrade campaign with intrusive popups for Windows 10 users

As a software developer: MS has been 100X better to work with under Nadella. He may not know what to do with the operating system side of things, but the .NET/Azure/android/linux etc side has never been healthier.